


the fate of all empires

by meritmut



Series: i loved you well, when we were young [16]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, in which Asgard is - as all empires are - doomed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 18:04:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/916358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Initial working title "Sif goes off the deep end."</p>
            </blockquote>





	the fate of all empires

_i. One of these days the mountains are gonna fall into the sea_

_Lady Sif, will you bring our treacherous son to justice?_

She bows her head, obedient – dutiful as any king could want of his devoted leal knight. _I will find him_ , she vows, voice ringing throughout gladsheimr as she rests a clenched fist across her armoured chest in salutation to the crumbling monarchy (they don’t know it’s crumbling, not yet, but the fuse has been laid and all that remains is the apocalypse; the cataclysm that will tear the ground from beneath their complacent feet). Might as well make an obeisance to remember, she thinks, for how many more will they receive?

It might be that her nose is keener than most, that she has known since the very beginning - the beginning of the end, that is - that the winds are blowing stronger than ever before from the roots of the World Tree and on those rotten airs Sif scents a storm greater than any Asgard has ever known, and a winter that will end only when the final flames swallow the world.

And Sif does not intend to burn with it.

_ii. Though you left me here, I have nothing left to fear_

She knows few doubts, this proud one, with her hard grin and sparkling eyes and her princely bearing (yes, princely, for she has suffered comparisons to both the sons of Odin in her time, be it for the lanky length of her youthful stride or the indomitable force of nature she has become in adulthood). The immovable surety of her existence burns, a visible play of power upon her skin like firelight over glass, that ossifies in an impenetrable exoskeleton, cries out you will not vanquish me; you will not see this body break.

Long ago people named her the Lady Einherji – at first mockingly, though with steel and strength she taught their tongues to praise the appellation swiftly enough – and in her, all the qualities of Asgard’s best must be personified.

And she is both woman and warrior, though for a time to be so felt like walking the blade of her own sword every day. The warrior is more than the woman, or so they’d have her think, but sometimes she wonders if she was not born to this – sometimes it occurs to her that the nature of woman encompasses all that the battle-hardened soldier ever could be, strength and mercy and courage and compassion contained within this flimsy categorisation of identity. Knowing this, that calling herself one does not mean sacrificing her right to be the other, strengthened the thin rime of steel beneath her feet, but there will always be room in the hairline cracks of her battle-tempered skin for doubt and the fair Sif is not above hesitation.

Nor does she pretend to be. When these wretched pervasive uncertainties find her, and steal their way between the scales of her armour to burrow into her core, she knows better than to deny them. Deceit, to a woman forged in the roiling crucible of blood and steel and unleashed upon the open field of battle a hundred score times since her long-ago youth, leads to dishonour and dishonour to disgrace, and sometimes a slight touch of fear has its uses…

Fear, she once said (and better not to think of the boy to whom she said it), is necessary: without it courage becomes blind recklessness and haste folly. She knows better than to act untouched by it – to pretend that doubt is beneath her. She knows better than to lie, even to herself, and claim that she does not pause even now at what she must do.

And she must: she can no sooner escape that inevitability than she can her own shadow. There is no other course available to a warrior bound not only by oath to a king and his realm, but by love to his sons. More than love – by honour.

She knows few doubts, this vengeful one, but there is nothing she would not do for her princes, and so she knows she must do this. As surely as she would see herself survive, she must obey her king.

_ii. Fears are only walls to hold me here_

This is Sif, so young and tender a creature: so fierce and hard a warrior that none can define her in their own minds (though they take great pains to do with their tongues). This is the shiver that scraps its nails down her spine as she wakes to a cold room and a sky bleached pale by the unspoken sorrow of all those who dwell beneath it, and this is the sigh that rattles her lungs at the chill of a bed, far narrower and infinitely emptier than that to which she is accustomed. Her skin itches at the slightest touch, her head pounds and her body aches as if bruised from the inside out. Battered, as if her dreams had taken hammers to her bones and split her apart to drain the dregs of life from her once-vital core.

Still she rises and throws her legs out over the side of the bed – she’d sprawled across the whole thing in her solitude, some unconscious part of her having hoped that she could with her own expanse convince herself that nothing was amiss, that there was not a monstrous thing absent from its home at her side.

In truth, Sif is amazed that she could have slept at all. In a cold, detached sort of way she relishes the fresh pain that scythes through her at the realisation that it was too easy to accept the absence of him.

And it will be no harder to live without him, tomorrow and tomorrow and all the tomorrows to come. This Sif tells herself as she garbs herself for the hunt. It might even be easier after today, because she’ll know that it was she who ensnared him; that it was her chains dragged him home, and that her cruel smile and remorseless gaze were his last sights.

Before she dons her armour she takes up her dirk, slides one finger along its blade – just above the steel, not touching, merely hovering. She has walked her entire life along a knife’s edge such as this but there’s no need to make the metaphor literal.

She could sever the fabric of the cosmos with that knife, she thinks, and she knows better than to risk even a minor injury before a hunt.

It is not she who will bleed, before her task is done.

They never thought her a bitter one, she who had forgiven so many of his slights over the years. He had shorn her beautiful hair, hair that had once caught the sun’s light and trapped it in its glowing web, and she had forgiven him as graciously as she was able (and a darn sight more graciously than his brother had). They thought her virtuous and honourable and above all _good_ , never imagined her capable of the seething hunger for vengeance that poisons her veins in the glimmering guise of justice. They never thought her cruel, not like this.

They never thought much, when they could assume all.

 _He_ never made that mistake. Not him, with the eyes like stagnant water and the brittle smirk that she longs to carve from his pale face. He never assumed, so full of doubt was he, but he taught her to lie and perhaps he did not realise that what he considered a talent, she considered a weapon.

It is an ignorance she will remedy, she vows: when the hunt is done, she will take her butcher’s knife and leave him a scarlet smile in place of that smirk.

_iv. The only walls that hold me here_

Blood seething, her bones itch beneath her skin as she escapes the oppressive sense of reluctant mourning that haunts the citadel. A court has lost its prince, and yet also been spared the wrath of a tyrant. How might they mourn, while at the same time exulting in their reprieve? It’s a dilemma Sif has put aside. She chooses instead to fume as she fixes her hair into a tight coronet, clears the palace by the entrance to the armoury and makes her way swiftly to the great stade beyond the training yard. Here, Asgard gathers to watch the athletic tournaments, the races and - of course, given who its crown prince is - the hammer toss. It’s empty; the realm bates its breath for a royal _minni_ and has no time for sport. Sif’s passage will go unnoticed.

She stands on the edge of the world and turns back to a fleeting, terrifying vision of the future - the future Asgard hurtles decadently and helplessly towards with no recourse for salvation. Towers crumble, voices lift into the heavens and shake the stars from their perches and for the first time in all her many centuries, Sif wants nothing more than to let it happen.

Asgard is a realm that breeds its own monsters, generates its own plagues. Sif’s life has been devoted to vanquishing them but now, she finds herself bringing one home.

She’ll hunt Loki down and she’ll kill him if she must. If duty demands it she will cut his throat and drag his carcass back behind her horse, let the ravens make their meals from his eyes and fix herself a necklace from his teeth, but if Asgard’s fate is to fall then so is hers (she knows this at last, could never have fought it) - and she’ll kiss those frozen lips of his one last time before the end.


End file.
